UA Graduate and Undergraduate Research: Recent submissions

The goal: To expedite cleaning of maritime distress signals without manual filtering.
Maritime distress transmissions received by the U.S. Coast Guard are subject to environmental
noise and communication channel distortion, and must be filtered manually using current
Rescue 21 software, which can be time consuming and imprecise.
This project uses deep learning to improve signal filtration. The core of the software is a denoising auto-encoder, a machine learning model that recognizes and removes distortion from
input audio files. Noisy distress signals are input into the team’s software and automatically
filtered by the auto-encoder, which generates a coherent, noiseless version of the input signal.
Testing required the software to process a 5-minute audio segment in under a minute while using less than 2 GB of local memory. The software is compatible with all operating systems used by the Coast Guard, including the existing Rescue 21 software.

The goal: To expedite cleaning of maritime distress signals without manual filtering.
Maritime distress transmissions received by the U.S. Coast Guard are subject to environmental
noise and communication channel distortion, and must be filtered manually using current
Rescue 21 software, which can be time consuming and imprecise.
This project uses deep learning to improve signal filtration. The core of the software is a
de-noising auto-encoder, a machine learning model that recognizes and removes distortion from
input audio files. Noisy distress signals are input into the team’s software and automatically
filtered by the auto-encoder, which generates a coherent, noiseless version of the input signal.
Testing required the software to process a 5-minute audio segment in under a minute while
using less than 2 GB of local memory. The software is compatible with all operating systems
used by the Coast Guard, including the existing Rescue 21 software.

Using creative non-fiction, this piece explores and follows the life of a person
experiencing dual sensory loss of hearing and sight. This narrative is through the lens of seeing
both, the positives and negativesj of the medical community, paradigm and influences. Also, this
piece explores the lifelong experiences of a person who’s worked with individuals in the
audiology field since he was a young boy, to an older man.
This piece investigates the damaging affects others create by ostracizing whether
knowingly or not. Marginalization comes in many forms and can happen to anybody, at any age.
This exploration of self by this author strives to tell his story in a unique way.

“Over 340 million children and adolescents worldwide aged 5-­‐19 were overweight or obese in 2016.”(1) Becoming obese or overweight can lead to cardiovascular issues that can affect the heart, the blood, or vessels. The heart, blood, and vessels have very important functions for the body and exercising can help improve their functions. Most importantly, short bouts of high intensity exercise is proven to be very beneficial. This type of exercise not only improves cardiovascular health, but it also gets people up and moving. A daily exercise flipbook is attached to encourage the youth and adults to partake in daily physical activity for at least two minutes a day. Its purpose is to reveal how high intensity physical activity can benefit the cardiovascular system and in hopes, reduce the amount of children who are overweight or obese in the world.

The purpose of this thesis was to develop an educational pamphlet on the safety of home birth that details the best practices for assuring the safety of the mother and neonate. Home birth rates have increased by 80% from 2009 to 2014 in the United States (Grünebaum & Chervenak, 2016). When attended by a midwife, home births have been found to be just as safe as hospital births for low-risk women (Hutton, et al., 2015). Many mothers may not know that home births are a safe alternative to a hospital birth setting and producing and widely distributing an educational pamphlet within the setting of a midwifery practice would provide mothers with necessary evidence-based information. When safety information and best-practices are widely available, expectant mothers can make an educated decision on birth setting.

Multiple-gaze geometry, a research project from the Interdisciplinary Visual Intelligence Lab (IVI-
LAB) at the University of Arizona, aims to gain an understanding of a 3D scene using a view
from a single camera. The locations of points of interest in the scene are inferred by utilizing the
intersection of the gazes of the people within it. This task requires several smaller pre-processing
tasks to be run on the video data; in particular, people must be detected, along with their faces and
key facial features. Currently, these pre-processing steps are performed with older code. Since new
detection programs have been developed since the start of this project, there is value in examining
how these programs can improve tracking results by providing better face and body detections.
In this paper, I show the performance of these detectors on datasets that are being used with the
multiple-gaze geometry tracker, and then compare the results visually and quantitatively to those
from the currently used detection code. Through this research, I found that the program OpenPose
can be used to obtain better body detections, but also that none of the software I tested for face
detections outperform the one currently in use.

The purpose of this thesis was to develop an educational fact sheet with best practice
recommendations based on current evidence for skin-to-skin contact between mothers and their
newborns. Skin-to-skin is a relatively new concept, but research over the past few decades has
indicated that skin-to-skin contact (SSC) is an effective and safe intervention for mothernewborn
dyads and provides a plethora of physiological and psychological benefits.
Implementing an educational pamphlet in the setting of either a childbirth class or in perinatal
clinics would provide expectant mothers with research-based information so they can make the
educated decision to provide skin-to-skin contact with their infant.

Obesity affects people with Down Syndrome at nearly twice the rate of the general population, with dietary behaviors being significant contributors. We thus sought to qualitatively assess the feasibility of implementing a plant-pure diet in families of children with Down Syndrome. This diet is correlated with healthy weight loss and decreased incidence of chronic conditions linked to obesity (Campbell, Parpia, & Chen, 1998).
Following a health education event, the CDC’s Health Related Quality of Life Core Module (HRQOL-4) and a cookbook usage survey gauged dietary implementation and participants’ reactions over a 4-week follow-up period.
The health education event, attended by 12 people including independent people with Down Syndrome, parents, and children, was successful. Following plant pure meals, a documentary, and a healthy eating discussion, attendees formulated ideas for dietary implementation and explicitly stated changes in perspective. Eight families (66% of attendees) consented to the follow-up study but compliance with protocol was poor.
The event’s community setting, a speaker with Down Syndrome sharing his dietary successes, and addressing concerns via discussions appeared to contribute to the attendees’ favorable opinion. Further research is still needed to determine the feasibility of implementing this diet in families of children with Down Syndrome.

This paper will discuss the topic of sovereign debt in the United States as well as analyze different
countries’ historical strategies to lower their own sovereign debts. These strategies have prevented
other countries from losing international reputation, which causes them to no longer be able to
borrow from foreign lenders. This topic of the United States’ sovereign debt problem is widely
discussed as it as viewed as not urgent in today’s day in age, but unsolved it could lead to serious
repercussions for the United States. Upon analysis of other countries’ historical strategies this
paper will outline specific cuts in spending as well as increases in specific revenue areas that will
ensure a reduction in the United States sovereign debt.

RNA is a crucial aspect of life. The extraction of RNA allows for one to be able to code one’s genetic code, therefore obtaining a great deal of information about how life functions and what composes life. The extraction of RNA from human blood samples was performed using the Direct-zol RNA MiniPrep kit, which provided all of the reagents and instructions for the proper extraction of RNA from a sample of bodily fluid. Three reagents, DNA/RNA Shield, TRIzol, and RNAlater were compared in terms of which provided the highest concentration and purtiest sample of RNA being extracted from a single blood. From the data obtained, it was found that there is no significant difference between the results obtained from the three reagents. Therefore, when conducting a larger extraction, any one of the reagents could be used for storage and extraction and will result in statistically similar results when comparing concentration of RNA as well as its purity.

Miscarriage, or early pregnancy loss, is a fairly common occurrence in the United States, with approximately 11-41% of women experiencing at least one lost pregnancy during her lifetime. Yet, despite the prevalence of miscarriage, women report dissatisfaction with the quality of care they received from their healthcare providers. The purpose of this thesis is to identify deficiencies of care in the treatment of women experiencing miscarriage and to establish evidence-based recommendations to promote quality patient care and improve patient satisfaction. Research was collected and synthesized from the CINAHL and Medline/PubMed databases. Studies show that women want providers to address their emotional needs, not just their physical needs. They want providers to fully explain the process of miscarriage and their treatment options in understandable language rather than medical jargon. Above all, they want to feel that their pregnancy loss is being recognized as a significant or even traumatic event. This thesis includes best practices recommendations and a theoretical protocol to assist healthcare providers to improve their care of this patient population.

This paper explores the role of bilingualism in a person’s ability to learn the morphophonological rules of a miniature language - a small, novel language designed to investigate language acquisition. Previous research has investigated whether bilingual speakers show cognitive and linguistic advantages over monolinguals, with mixed results. Some research shows general cognitive advantages for bilinguals, others show advantages with specific linguistic constructions but not others, and still others show no advantages. To inform this debate, participants were taught the pattern of pluralization in a novel language using a miniature-language learning task and were then tested on their ability to apply the rules they learned to new forms. The plural forms illustrated either initial consonant mutation, where the first consonant of a word changes in certain contexts, or infixation, where a morpheme is added in the middle of a word. The proportion of correct responses was compared between monolingual and bilingual speakers for both pluralization patterns, and no significant difference was found. While further research is necessary to determine the specificity of this finding, this experiment suggests that there may be no difference in bilingual and monolingual speaker’s ability to learn the morphophonological rules of a language.

The purpose of this thesis is to present best practice guidelines to support healthcare systems in promoting job retention and satisfaction for nurse employees. Increased nursing job turnover is a major concern of hospitals across the United States. Review of literature in PubMed and CINAHL was completed utilizing the keywords: nurse retention, personnel retention, and job satisfaction. Best practice guidelines consisting of a conceptual framework, onboarding program, and stay interview method were produced, considering system-wide inclusion of leaders at all levels. The thesis culminated in a hypothetical implementation and evaluation of the three strategies. The proposed best practice guidelines would encourage nurse engagement within the workplace, and increase nurse support offered by leaders and managers, to ultimately promote nurse retention in healthcare facilities.

This paper examines transitional justice mechanisms, drawing from their
application in previous cases to make recommendations for a post-conflict Syria.
The civil war has seen numerous parties on all sides commit war crimes and
human rights abuses, meaning that foreign actors will need to play a role in
overseeing the transitional justice process and economic reconstruction in Syria
following the conflict’s end. This paper suggests that, considering the likely
victory of the Syrian government, combination of amnesties, truth commissions,
and reparations should be pursued by the conflict’s actors and overseen by
foreign mediators. Further, third parties should aid in reparation payments to
victims and implement adoption schemes to allow for a quicker and more
productive process of economic reconstruction. Pursuing these mechanisms will
allow for a stable post-conflict Syria in which human rights are better protected.

The mixed results of the response threshold model for division of labor in social insects suggests that threshold-based models can be useful tools for understanding how division of labor emerges in social insects, yet our current paradigm is incomplete. We therefore introduce two new models for division of labor to potentially fill this knowledge-gap that we name the ‘satisfaction threshold’ and ‘composite threshold’ models. If the response threshold results in specialization by allowing some individuals to respond to a task-associated stimulus sooner than others, then the satisfaction threshold results in specialization by allowing some individuals to stop performing the task later than others. Composite thresholds are found in individuals who have both a response and satisfaction threshold. Here, we show that these models yield different colony-level behaviors and suggest that different threshold models may be better suited for different types of tasks.

Division of labor is one of the defining characteristics of social insect societies. It is thought that
division of labor arises through simple logical rules and requires only that workers respond to
environmental stimuli they encounter. It has been proposed that the response threshold is one of
the primary rules that drives division of labor. We test this hypothesis by measuring response
thresholds in the ant species Temnothorax rugatulus to different task-associated stimuli and see
whether or not they can predict which tasks the ant takes on in the colony. We found that the
response threshold hypothesis successfully predicts the relationship between the sensitivity to
task-associated stimuli and performance of the task itself for one task, but it fails at predicting
the relationship of the other task. In fact, the results were the opposite of what the response
threshold predicted, suggesting that there may exist an alternative rule that functions in the
opposite direction of the response threshold and yet may also be capable of allocating tasks. Here
we coin the term ‘satisfaction threshold’ as a name for this alternative mechanism.

The thesis focuses on the components inside the device, vulnerabilities, and interaction with the IoT device, Amazon's Echo Plus. The security of the device is addressed to help users understand how the device operates and what precautions should be in place. Many known vulnerabilities have affected the device along with the steps taken to secure the device. The interaction with the device discusses the steps taken to set up the device and the possible red flags found during this process. Also looked at is how the device can connect users near and far along with the possibility of surprise connections with friends and unknown connections where voice conversations are heard. The final piece is analyzing the packet capture of the device during three different scenarios; the device in isolation, the device in the main room with interaction happening around the device, and finally the user interacting with the device.

Reporters have done a tremendous job reporting on the ‘Me Too’ movement. Over a year
ago, the movement to tell previously untold stories of powerful men sexually harassing and
assaulting women, as well as other men, began sweeping the nation. Thanks to tenacious
journalists unafraid to seek the facts and foster relationships with sources, and news
organizations willing to give reporters the time and resources to spend months reporting on the
same story, these stories have had an impact. Men in powerful positions, including Hollywood
producers, famous comedians and actors, government officials, and even journalists, have been
forced out of their jobs. It’s easy to say that people with a pattern of inflicting abuse on those
they have power over should suffer a consequence, but much harder to find compelling evidence
that compels the previously ambivalent to act. Stories like those written in the New York Times
and the New Yorker exposing Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein opened the door to the
national reckoning that is still playing out today.

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